I'm certainly not the same person I was a few years ago, when I first took my writing seriously. Like most, I've been slowly discovering who I am and what kind of writer I want to be. I've dabbled in all genres and mediums, and if I'm being honest—I still don't truly know who I am. But that's okay.
We're all in this boat of discovering ourselves, right?
While achieving my undergraduate degree in creative writing, majority of my creative juices were spent writing prose with the occasional poem. The reason for this was mainly due to the constraint of an education platform. Professors don't necessarily have the time to read 40,000+ words from ten to thirty students (depending on the university and class sizes). And let's not forget, most professors teach multiple courses and various sections of that course. Even if the class sizes are extremely small, no professor could expect to read through book-length projects for every student. What I've appreciated from my professors is that they valued our efforts as writers and wanted to match that effort with reading through our work. For that reason, most of my written works were ten or less pages in length (approximately 5,000 words).
I appreciate my learning experience while my degree molded me to become a prose writer because I learned two things: the essence of the story shouldn't change by its length and my forte is certainly long-form fiction (a.k.a novels).
But the biggest writing discovery I found for myself during my time in college was what my preferred genre is. You might be thinking this isn't that big of a deal. So I found a genre I prefer. You may be right that what genre I choose may not be exciting, but the journey of how I got there and made that decision most definitely is.
To preface the change I made while going on my journey of discovery to find my writer-self, let me disclose that currently I actively write women narratives. What I mean by this is that my main characters are usually strong and independent women who adventure in either a realistic world or a fantasy one. My writing is a mix between realism and fantasy, with some stories drawing more heavily onto one side while others are a mix between the two. I write from dramas to action/adventures, but that wasn't always the case.
When I first started my creative writing education, my writing style was a little more . . . morbid, I guess you could say. I had convinced myself I was a horror writer. Don't ask me why because to this day, I don't really know. But looking back at the works I wrote at that time, it was clearly forced. Horror may have been fun to write, but it wasn't my true voice. It took me nearly three years to figure that out.
Check out my old horror writing blog "The Writing Chamber" here—full of advice, tips, and techniques: https://horroraddicts.wordpress.com/author/dianaeclarke/
It wasn't until I stopped forcing myself to write and created what naturally flowed that I discovered my true writer-self. Once I accepted horror wasn't the best fit for me, my stories bloomed into stories I actually wanted to tell and not what I thought I had to tell based on what was popular or fun.
But my time in college wasn't the first time I thought I was a different writer. Believe it or not, the first book I wrote was back when I was twelve. Technically, I started the project at eight, but I don't really count that version of the manuscript because of how un-readable it is. Don't get me wrong; the twelve-year-old version is pretty bad too, but just not as bad.
Back in middle school, I wrote a fantasy teen romance about a mermaid. I make fun of it now, but back then I was extremely proud of it. 400 pages that were all mine. That was quite an accomplishment for someone my age, but it is clearly no where near publishable and I don't wish it to be. This book represents a different time of my life for me to look back on, when I wished to be hopelessly in love and have a boy call me his "dream girl." Yup, I know, total cringe.
The point of this story is—as a writer I have changed a plenty over the years but I wouldn't go back and do anything differently. What I have learned from my writing journey has made me into the confident writer I am today. The stories I am writing now are ones I know my readers will enjoy because I enjoyed writing them and actively enjoy reading them. I have laughed, cried, and sometimes sweat from my writing, and that is a good thing. Hopefully you will too, one day, when my hard work finally pays off and my books are out for the world to see!